She must learn again to speakstarting with Istarting with Westarting as the infant doeswith her own true hungerand pleasure and rage.

-- Marge Piercy

Aug 4 Exprayeriment #8 -- Hai Forgive Ku...and Myself, Too

I fully and freely forgive. I loose and let go. I let go and let God.

-Catherine Ponder

Forgiveness is by far the most difficult spiritual path for a human to walk. The typical religious model of forgiveness is a holier-than-thou, judgment based declaration. The problem is, if you go into judgment, your human self will stay there.

True forgiveness is an experience of release: “What happened, happened, and I am choosing to no longer carry the experience.”

To fully forgive you must completely acknowledge your pain, give yourself permission to feel it, and then be willing to heal and release it. And that can feel like a heavy, scary, overwhelming task.

But the truth is, every day there are countless opportunities to practice forgiveness, and you are likely doing it without even being aware. Crabby bank tellers, crappy drivers, the person in line behind you in the grocery store who has no awareness of personal space...and yourself any time you are one of the aforementioned. By going about your day and not dwelling on those things, possibly even finding compassion for the perpetrator, you're exercising a very simple yet powerful form of forgiveness.

Since International Forgiveness Day is Sunday, August 5, we decided to make the focus of this week's Exprayeriment forgiveness, but with a lighter touch. A touch of Haiku.

Throughout the week, notice the times you spontaneously forgive and, for those situations where you need a little help to forgive, the prayer above is a great resource. Then start counting your syllables and organizing your experience of forgiveness into lines of 5-7-5.